bones more, perhaps, than I should that over any sovereign with whose history I am acquainted.'

Lord Bacon thought Julius Cæsar to be the most complete character in all history. Had he lived in our age, it is likely that he would have expressed that opinion in favour of Akber, one of those prodigies of nature which appear on the earth at the interval of many centuries. The Judishthira of Hindoo history has been immortalized rather as the ideal of a philosophical prince, than an actual model king for the imitation of sovereigns. The fame of Akber recalls to mind the pod of musk which his father broke and distributed among his followers, to make the customary presents on the birth of a son, with the fond wish of a parent that the boy's fame might be diffused through the world like the odour of that perfume. In the language of the poet, his 'thoughts were heard in heaven,' and his wishes fulfilled beyond the utmost expectations.

Only two old Mussulmans now attend upon the monarch, at whose behest a hundred thousand swords had often leapt into the air from their scabbards. The duty of these men is to read the daily prayers over the dead and to show the cheragh at night-to light 'the lamps in a sepulchre.' Their grey beards are well suited to the gravity of their task, and, as ciceroni of the place, they possess the necessary fund of intelligence.

In the outer verandah are two small sepulchres, of Akber's two grandsons, who died in their infancy. They seem to keep company with their grandfather, who was so very fond of children. Beyond the quad

rangle lie the tombs of omrahs and officers, who, serving in life, at last gathered themselves to sleep round their beloved sovereign.

In 1805, two British dragoons found comfortable lodgings in this immense mausoleum. The horses used to be tethered in the splendid garden. The troopers ate, and slept, and pursued their sports among the tombs. Could the mighty men of old have started into life, they would have been amazed to hear sounds and behold sights most strange and marvellous to their ears and eyes-they would have wondered to see the descendants of those who had danced attendance upon them with bribes of diamonds for the favour of a firman to erect a little factory turned into masters of the land, and arbiters of the fate of their own descendants. It is but justice, however, to the men, that though they were rough dragoons, unused to the mood of relishing or reverencing works of art, they had the English feeling of respect for the dead, and offered no violence to the sanctity of the tomb-leaving the marble slabs and ornamented niches, the carvings and mosaic pavements, and the cupolas and minarets, uninjured and entire.

Three days ago, there had come hither a party of gentlemen to amuse themselves in exercises upon a subject fully worth photographing. The Secundra, by which name the tomb is commonly known, does not receive from travellers the same justice that is often done to the Taj. No doubt, the latter has by far a decided superiority, but not so as to throw the other entirely into the shade. The two have their own re

spective merits. In the Secundra, the emperor is conjured up as standing in a serene majesty, with all the paraphernalia of state about him. In the Taj, is contemplated the image of a superlative beauty, angelic and undying in her charms.

The homage that is paid to greatness seems to be as much a law in the moral world as the attraction of smaller bodies by larger ones is a law in the physical world. Indeed, something like a fascination holds a man to the spot where sleeps the greatest monarch of all history alone in his glory. The idea of vanquishing time by a tomb,' says Chateaubriand, of surviving generations, manners, laws, and ages, by a coffin, could not have sprung from a vulgar mind.' By it, the dead makes himself a contemporary with the generations of future ages. Though it is now two hundred and fifty years since the mortal remains of Akber have been consigned to the grave, and that a heavy mass of marble presses upon them with its weight, still he may be fancied as surviving to this day, and filling the spot with his august presence. But the solitude and stillness of death are around him—and leaving his Majesty to sleep out undisturbed his sleep of eternity, we took our last look at the mausoleum, and made our exit from the spot.

Munce Begum's Tomb.-There was in Akber's harem a European lady of the name of Munee Begum. Probably she had been forwarded by the Government of Goa on the request of the Emperor,-or that the Catholic Padres of that city thought the most useful missionary who could

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be sent to Agra would be a handsome woman of their race and faith to win over the Emperor to Christianity by the persuasion of fair lips. The Emperor survived his Lusitanian mistress, and showed his affection, for her memory by erecting over her remains a handsome tomb at Secundra. In this tomb was located for many years the Press of the Church Mission Society, and its premises afforded shelter to 300 orphans in the famine of 1838.

In proceeding from Secundra to Muttra, the most careless observer cannot fail to mark the indications of

a poorer country than any left behind. The region spreads for the most part a dreary expanse under the sky, unenlivened by any grazing cattle, or rich sheets of cultivation, or a rapid succession of happy little village-communities. There are few of those umbrageous topes, which enrich the prospect of an alluvial land with their luxuriant boughs and foliage. The soil is partially of a sandy nature, and all herbage has a stunted growth. The crop on the ground was a decided failure-the thin sallow stalks standing several inches apart each from its neighbour. This is certainly to be attributed more to the unusual drought this season than to other causes. But the striking local changes cannot be mistaken to announce the beginning of the country, which further westward has terminated in a wide sea of sand-never so pithily described as in the memorable words of Shere Shah, 'that he had nearly lost the empire of India for a handful of millet.'

Nor less does the traveller happen to find himself among a race of people, differing from the other Indians as widely in their moral as in their external characteristics-the transition of a country being never without a transition of its people. Next to the Bengalee, the Beharee, the Khottah, and the Doabee, is the turn of the Jaut, whose Hindoo or Getic origin is yet an undecided question. But all accounts agree in representing him as having originally settled on the banks of the Indus, and subsequently emigrated to the banks of the Chumbul and Jumna. It has been his lot to live always under an ungenial climate, and to combat with the sterility of a sandy soil. He is, therefore, a marauder as much by necessity as by his antecedents. Physical causes sufficiently account for the ethnic variety and dissimilarity of the habits and customs of the Jaut, which are erroneously thought to be the characteristics. of his non-Hindoo origin. The Mogul's difficulty became the Jaut's opportunity, and the latter rose to that wealth and power which gradually brought on his fusion into the Hindoo nationality. He has yet, however, many of his original peculiarities to single him out from the rest of his nation. The people of the Doab have for the most part well-formed features. The rude Jaut has a coarse, mean physiognomy.

The thinness of cultivation is always an evidence of a thin population. In the Doab, the calamity of a famine is yet looming in the distance. But in the country hereabouts, the distress has already made its appearance. The roads have become insecure after